Buying and selling rice

I’ve said over and over again that it is impossible to truly understand the essence of a language without knowing a bit of culture and history. Language is contextual. An idiomatic phrase or saying that is difficult to remember because it seems “odd” might stick better if you understand its origins. Such was the case for me with this particular idiom.

쌀사다: to sell rice

쌀팔다: to buy rice

My friend Kwang-im told me that in Korean, the phrase ‘to buy rice’ actually literally translates to ‘to sell rice.’ 쌀을 팔다. 쌀 is rice and 팔다 is ‘to sell.’ I couldn’t really make head or tails of why this phrase would turn out this way. It just seemed to be intentionally misleading!

Back in the day, rice was the most important crop/asset for any Korean family, especially farmers. It was so critical to their survival that Koreans believed just the merest mention of “running out” of rice would infuriate the souls of their ancestors. So, instead of saying you were going out to buy rice (implying that you had run out – gasp!), you’d say you were going to SELL rice. Because you have so much excess rice that you need to get rid of some of it. That’ll placate the ancestors!

There is also some speculation that class hierarchy and social standing might have lent itself to this phrase. During the Joseon Dynasty and earlier, when Korea was chiefly an agrarian society, those who were in the position to sell rice could almost be considered almost nobility. However, partaking in commercialism implied you were a merchant, which was still considered “low-class.” So instead of saying outright that they were selling rice (쌀을 판다), merchants would say something like “I am buying money with rice” (쌀로 돈을 산다, which then becomes shortened to just 쌀을 산다). So then from the merchant’s perspective, 쌀을 산다 actually means “I’m selling rice”; flip that around, and from the buyer’s perspective, 쌀을 판다 means “I am buying rice.”

Kind of confusing, but a very interesting redefinition of what it means to buy and sell something. It makes a lot of sense if you think about money as a commodity to be bought and sold. So when merchants say 쌀 산다 it’s like they mean “I have a lot of rice so I will BUY money with it.” When buyers say 쌀 판다 it’s like they mean, “I have a lot of money so I will SELL it in exchange for rice.”

Now that my brain can interpret Korean in real-time (without first mentally translating into English, that is), reading language history and etymology stuff like this makes it easier for me to grasp less intuitive idioms. Plus it’s super interesting!